


Stockholm Syndrome

by Stephquiem



Series: Brain Trust [2]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Alternate Universe, Body-Snatching related consent issues, F/M, Interspecies Relationship(s), Involuntary infestation, No actual sex, Other, References to Sex, Underage Infestation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-04 13:40:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10992075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stephquiem/pseuds/Stephquiem
Summary: All relationships have their ups and downs--especially when one of you is an alien from a species trying to take over the world.Loosely connected to People Like Us, but that story isn't required reading to understand this one.





	Stockholm Syndrome

**Author's Note:**

> "Carris/Adam/Fiona are old RP characters I wrote in... 2011? Ish? I should honestly write a story just for them, living in a janitor's closet with a baby is honestly the least terrible thing that's ever happened to them." - From the notes on Chapter 17 of People Like Us.

**_Adam_ **

The first time I kissed a girl, I was fourteen.

It's hard being the new kid, you know? When you're a kid, your whole life's dictated by your parents' decisions. No matter how great your parents are--and mine were more decent than a lot of people's, to be fair--sometimes they made decisions that were probably for the good of the family, but to you, the kid who had no say in things, they meant the end of the world. I didn't want to move three thousand miles away. I didn't want to have to go to a new school, make new friends. I wasn't really good at making friends--I _had_ friends, but they were mostly the people I'd known forever, from back in the days when gaining a best friend was as easy as letting someone borrow your markers during Art.

Our new home was too alien. It was too hot, too dry. It never snowed, which bothered me more than I thought it would. I didn't even like snow. But its absence just felt so wrong, so unnatural. There's an odd sort of comfort in the ritual of complaining. 

So I entered a new school as the quiet new kid. I probably could have made my own way, given enough time. Maybe. But I was alone in a new place, and maybe that made me an easy target. No, no maybe--it _did_ make me a target.

It was hard to say no to Gabby. She was pretty--smoothe olive-toned skin, long dark hair, one of those smiles that unsettled you, but somehow in a way that made you want to see it again. She was older than me, too, a sophomore while I was a freshman. I reasoned that it wasn't such a difference. It came out for four or five months, really. Clearly she didn't care, so neither should I.

I found myself spending time with Gabby and her friends. I didn't like her friends--they made me uneasy. I thought for sure that they were talking about me when I wasn't there, that they changed the subject of whatever they were talking about when I approached.

When Gabby kissed me, I thought it would be nicer. You watch movies and television, and you see people kiss all the time. They certainly seem to like it on TV, but maybe that's just acting. They've got to make everything more dramatic to keep it interesting. When I was a little kid, my parents would leave me with my grandma during the day, and I'd sit and watch her soap operas with her. Everything in soap operas was dramatic, even the most mundane. I told myself that was probably why it wasn't what I expected. When Gabby asked me if I would go somewhere with her, I said yes. When she asked me if I would do something very important for her, I said of course. I can still see her brilliant, unsettling smile in my nightmares sometimes.

I was a stupid, stupid kid.

* * *

 

_**Carris** _

There's no such thing as "retirement" for Yeerks. 

You could, I guess, spend out the rest of your days unhosted in the pool, if you didn't mind handing your host over to someone else. Most hosts these days don't die of old age thanks to the war, but even if they did their lifespans vary so much from species to species. A Yeerk can easily outlive a Hork-Bajir host or two--or three--and who's even heard of an elderly Taxxon? Human lifespans were much longer than both, and depending on their age when you got them, they could outlive you by a long while. I think our lifespans are more in line with Gedds, maybe. Maybe when a Gedd gets too old, it's time for their Yeerk to return to the pool and start their own end-of-life cycle. I don't know. It's been a long time since a Gedd has died of old age, too.

To be fair, I wasn't old. I wasn't a young grub, either. I'd seen things. I'd fought in battles. I'd seen people die. I'd lost comrades I was close to. You couldn't really afford to care, to let it get to you, but it did after awhile. You notice an absence when your pool brothers are no longer there.

To return to the pool would have been shameful, and idiotic. I was to be stationed on Earth. A relatively new acquisition--only, what, a few hundred of our people there already? We'd made our base in an area humans called "Southern California," and infiltration was a slow, tedious process. With potential host numbers in the billions, it would take years.

I asked Odem Six-Five-Nine to find me a calm host. Someone who wouldn't give me trouble. I was tired. I didn't need more excitement. If Odem judged me, at least she didn't say anything, which is all I asked, really.

"Quiet" didn't mean "voluntary," though, and as it turned out, "quiet" came with caveats. I didn't mind an involuntary host--I'd had them before, after all--but Adam's reaction to infestation was new to me. The first sensation I became aware of as I entered his brain was thrashing. He thrashed and cried and might have shouted if our head wasn't still below the surface of the pool, but I didn't hear him as a voice in my head yet. I heard his racing thoughts, but they weren't directed at me, like he didn't know he could, or like the instinct to save himself was overwhelming all else. A wholly futile instinct, but an interesting one nonetheless.

He didn't stop the thrashing until I forced the body to still. The change was abrupt, a sudden ceasing of movement. I heard a cry in my head, like I'd hurt him, and then only the thrum of the subconcious mind.

* * *

 

**_Adam_ **

You can get used to anything if you try hard enough.

I'm not a fighter. The very idea of it sounds exhausting to me, honestly. Maybe Gabby--Odem, whoever--sensed that. Maybe that was why she'd picked me. Maybe she sensed that I was too weak-willed to be a bother. I don't know. I do know that it was easier to be angry at her than it was to be angry at Carris. Carris I couldn't avoid. Gabby/Odem I could. Why fight what you couldn't avoid? And Carris wasn't the worst, anyway. He didn't upset my life too much. It had already been in a state of change when he got there, anyway. At least he didn't throw out my stuff. Some Yeerks do that, I've heard. They declutter, or use it as punishment for an unruly host. I didn't have a lot of clutter, though, either. I'd had to get rid of a lot of stuff in the move. Not getting more stuff was the least of my problems.

It helped that Carris' attempts to lure in my family were mostly half-hearted. I don't think he wanted to go through the trouble. He mentioned the Sharing, but my mom said she was too busy. My brother said he had too much else going on. My dad smiled at us and said he thought it was probably something better for younger people, though Carris assured him that plenty of people his age and older were members, too. I think my dad was just being nice.

I didn't want my family to be Controllers. He didn't say so, but I don't think Carris wanted it either. Our life was pretty comfortable as it was. It was nice, whatever we had to do on a given day, to come home to peace. To parents and a brother who didn't notice that someone else was pretending to be me. That should have hurt, and it did a little bit. But they couldn't be harmed by what they didn't notice.

<It can't last,> Carris reminded me.

<I know,> I said. <Just let me pretend a while, okay?>

College rolled around before it became an issue, and then we were hardly ever home again.

* * *

 

_**Carris** _

Human engineering was inferior, but it was the least useless thing we could study. Adam had a good mind for numbers, which helped. It gave me something to tap into. It would be a long four years--at least--if I thought we weren't doing something worthwhile.

Tutoring was dull, but we got paid a little for it, so who was I to complain? 

When she walked into the tutoring center one afternoon, my first thought was that she looked like a little kid who'd hit puberty too soon. Small all over like the growth spurt fairy had passed her by. She'd marched in with a heavy set of textbooks cradled in her arms, set them down on my table with a loud _thunk!_ and informed me that I was going to help her understand Calculus or accept responsibility as the reason she dropped out and became a hobo. Her actual words.

I liked her a lot.

Fiona, I discovered, was deadly serious about school--she was there on a scholarship. She came from a tiny podunk town where most people couldn't afford to go. She wanted to be a doctor, and had wanted to since she was a little girl. I appreciated her ambition. The first thing I remembered wanting to be was a Visser--I wanted to be someone important. Have the most important hosts. Give the orders others followed. I had made it as far as Sub-Visser Sixty-Two before I realized blind ambition only took you so far. It stung a little less with each passing year to watch people who had been my subordinates get promoted over me. At least Fi's ambition was a noble one, I suppose. And when she wasn't stressing about the subjects that gave her trouble, she was very pleasant to talk to.

There's a taboo against romantic relationships. They were acceptable only as far as they let you keep your cover, or if they had a purpose. I'm certain Adam wasn't the first or the last human to be trapped by a pretty face. Generally speaking, though, I never experienced much trouble. Adam wasn't overly interested, so I didn't have that to cloud things. 

There was no denying, then, that the interest that I formed was wholly mine. I can't say if it was the same as with humans--I don't think so. Whatever came was born of an instinct for closeness, for bonding, not anything else. These aren't foreign concepts to a Yeerk, but perhaps they manifested differently because I was attached to a different body. I'm not sure. It wasn't something people talked about. Ever. 

* * *

 

_**Adam** _

He asked me first, which was, you know, nice of him.

I liked Fiona. She was very serious about a lot of things, and I think Carris liked that. But it didn't take too much goading to get her to do something fun and not-serious, either. I wonder, sometimes, if he'd have still gone through with it if I hadn't liked her, if I'd said no when he asked if this or that was okay. I know Carris knows that I wonder that, but he's never said anything about it. Better not to think about it if it didn't have to happen, anyway.

It was... fine? Like kissing, I thought I should have enjoyed it more. People talk about sex like it's this greatest thing that you could possibly do with another person. And it was... fine. Maybe I felt this way because it wasn't me doing it, but then again I was kind of like that before Carris, too, so who knows. 

There's something weird and probably a little sad about knowing that the most important relationship I ever had was technically not mine. And yet, at the same time, it also felt natural, in the new meaning of the word that my life had fallen into since infestation. It should probably have bothered me more that it felt like I was being subsumed into someone else's personality. And it was messed up if I thought about it too long but I don't know. It still seemed better than most of the Yeerk-host relationships I've seen. At least I didn't have to be miserable all the time, right?

* * *

**_Carris_ **

Graduation came, and when Fi left for med school, we moved with her. We got a day job at an engineering firm that was made up entirely of my people, which was to say, our day job wasn't the most legit. My actual job was keeping tabs on the Empire's problem children--peace factions. Because the universe runs on irony, apparently.

On the one hand, the people it was my job to keep track of were undeniable traitors. On the other, an amusing distraction had turned into a genuine relationship. I didn't have to wonder what that said about me, I spent my working hours rooting out people whose crimes were similar or worse.

Infesting Fiona would have been easy. It would have made my life infinitely easier--and less dangerous--but the thought made me irrationally angry. If it came down to it, I'd rather see her dead. 

Peace movements were a much better alternative, frankly.

That first year after college, I rooted out a fair number of traitors. I did good work. A pity it was so hard to find the lynch pin in an operation, though, wasn't it? You could only do so much when you were only skimming the surface. Like trimming dead branches off a tree, it only seemed to make them grow a little stronger. It could be so endlessly frustrating.

You never know when the breaking moment will come. A perfectly routine meeting with my superior was innocuous enough. We discussed the progress of my projects--all very mundane. No different from scenes that play out in offices all over, I'm sure. Nothing unusual. Until the end.

"Your host has a partner, doesn't he?" Sub-Visser Six was peering at me from where she sat behind her desk, looking very like the professional businesswoman she was pretending to be. She shuffled her stack of papers around. "Fiona Little, is that right? She's not one of ours, is she?"

A distinct feeling of unease gripped me then. The sub-visser's expression was perfectly neutral. She might have been asking about the weather. "No," I said, carefully matching her tone. "There have been... difficulties." I settled for the answer that could have meant any number of things--the safest option, surely.

"Hmm," she hummed, shuffling her papers back into place. "Well, I'm sure we could clear those up easily enough." She smiled. "Bring her around. Tomorrow. That shouldn't be a problem, should it?" She raised an eyebrow at me, as if in challenge, and I knew. I knew that she knew. Or at least suspected the truth, or some piece of it. I imagine if I'd been a different Yeerk, lower in rank or with a less pristine track record, that this conversation would not have happened at all. Or perhaps if I'd had a less patient superior.

"Of course," I said easily. "No problem whatsoever."

* * *

 

_**Adam** _

Carris didn't always clue me in on what he was thinking, but after nine years together, I knew his ticks. He could sit still as a statue when we were in public, but once it was just the two of us, he wouldn't be able to stop fidgeting. As we drove home that night, our fingers rapped an uneven tattoo on the steering wheel. Our left knee vibrated with tiny, nervous motions. He kept scratching at imagined itches, like they were jumping all over our body every time our hand made contact. When we left the car, our legs shook slightly under us.

I felt sorry for him. It was too bad. I didn't think Fi would take it very well, either. I didn't like everything Carris used my body to do, not by a long way, but at least I was used to it by now, and at least Carris was like a friend, for the most part. I couldn't imagine having to deal with it all like it was new, not knowing what sort of person you were going to get. 

Carris unlocked the door to our apartment, and for a moment, we stood in the entry, our eyes traveling over the living room, the kitchen. Christmas was a few weeks away. Fiona had asked if it was okay if we could get a Christmas tree. Carris had told her he didn't mind. I did a little bit, but it had been a long time since we'd celebrated anything, and at least it'd make the place look festive. We were supposed to go looking for a tree that weekend. I guess that wasn't happening.

Carris marched into the bedroom. Fi wasn't home yet. Fridays were always her long days when she had class, and lab, right when everyone usually wants to get out for the weekend. Carris pulled open our closet doors, and pulled down the grey suitcase that rested on the top shelf, waiting for us to have time or money or both to go somewhere. He hauled it down and flung it onto the bed. As he started filling it with things--ours, Fi's--I said nothing. Everything he packed was practical, unsentimental. Yes to our good pair of jeans. No to Grandpa's watch, a graduation present from my parents. It was too bulky. Yes to Fiona's bulky UCLA hoodie. We might need warm clothes, who knew. No to that floral sundress that Carris loved her in. Our whole lives, carefully measured out. The unimportant got tossed aside and the necessary got folded neatly into the suitcase.

When Fi got home, we were waiting, bag packed. I could see her confusion at the sight of us, as she took in Carris' too cheery smile. "What's all this?" she asked.

"It's a surprise," Carris said brightly. "Weekend away. I thought we needed it."

"Adam..." She looked like she was about to argue--she had too much to do. She needed to study. Did we even have time? We spent so many Saturdays at work--could we even get away?

"Come on," Carris weedled. 

Maybe she caught something in our tone, because Fiona sighed and said. "Okay. Just let me shower first. I feel disgusting." 

So we sat and waited while Fi got ready, chatting about her anatomy lab while Carris kept glancing at the clock. The longer we waited, the more anxious he seemed to become, until Fiona finally emerged and said she was ready to go.

* * *

 

_**Carris** _

"So where are we going?"

"I told you," I said, glancing in the rearview mirror as I pulled off onto the ramp that would take us to the highway. "It's a surprise." Was that car following us? I purposefully dropped our speed as we merged. After a minute or two, the car behind us switched lanes and sped ahead.

Fiona didn't say anything again for a while, but when we pulled off for the exit headed towards Santa Barbara, she shot me a look of annoyance, guessing, probably, that I was springing a visit to Adam's parents on her--an event that, she'd informed me early on, required _pre-planning_. Adam's parents loved her, but even so.

The look of annoyance soon turned to confusion again, though, when I kept driving past our usual turn off. "Okay," she said. "You have to at least give me a hint." I could feel her eyes on me, but I kept staring resolutely at the road. When I didn't respond for a long minute, she said, "Adam?"

I felt my throat constrict, as if trying to cut off what I was going to say. There could still be time to turn back.

"I'm not Adam."

* * *

 

**_Adam_ **

To Fi's credit, she was taking this whole alien invasion thing really well.

She still had the shell-shocked look she'd been wearing since Carris had calmly explained to her on the drive over that he was actually an alien and part of an invasion force on Earth. She hadn't believed him, obviously, but he'd said just wait. I'll show you. And then we'd arrived at this nondescript looking office building, where the only thing to indicate what it was the logo on the door--the silhouette of a human brain with "TRUST" superimposed over it. Carris always called Brain Trust "a bunch of peacenik hippies," but I guess that's what he wanted now.

At least Fi didn't look as green as she had when she'd followed us, and our guide, downstairs to where they kept a small pool. As far as first pool experiences go, I couldn't feel too bad for her. This was _easy_. No cages, no screaming. no horror show aliens forcing your head down beneath the murky water. I saw a man in line for the infestation pier lend a hand to the woman in front of him as she lost her balance while crouching down. This was nothing.

But she'd watched Carris drop out of my ear with the sort of horrified expression she might have worn if we'd suddenly started eating our own poop in front of her. At least, as we sat in one of the rooms on the main floor, waiting for someone to have time to talk to us, I guess, she looked less like she was going to lose her dinner. 

I shifted uneasily in my chair, suddenly aware that this was literally the first time the two of us had ever been alone together. "He's not that bad," I eventually offered. "I mean, I wouldn't want to be on his bad side, but I think you're probably okay there." I offered her what I hoped was a reassuring smile, but who knows. I was out of practice.

Fi looked like she was working herself up to say something, so I waited patiently, giving her time. Finally, she asked, "How long have you...?"

"Been infested?" I supplied. I scratched my head thoughtfully. "A while. They got me real early on.  It was nine years in November." This clearly wasn't an answer that made her feel better, but it was the truth, so I didn't know what else I could have told her.

"Does it hurt?"

"I mean. Not really?" I thought about it for a moment. "It kind of pinches when they start going in, but they've got... something or other to numb it. You have to ask Carris about specifics if you want to know. But it's not that bad. And you don't really feel much of anything once they're in there, anyway. You don't feel 'em crawling around on your brain, or anything. It's just... like... the switches get turned off one by one to different parts of your body as they get transferred over to the Yeerk instead of you." I didn't mean for it to sound as awful as it probably did. It was all normal to me now. "I don't think they'll make you have somebody," I tried to assure her. "This place doesn't seem like the type, from what Carris has found out about it. He wouldn't have brought you here otherwise."

Fiona didn't want to talk much after that, so we sat in silence until someone poked their head into our room and cheerfully told us they were ready for whoever wanted to go first.

* * *

 

_**Carris** _

I traded information for safety. It was the most valuable thing I had and I worried that, if I didn't have something to give in exchange, I'd be shit out of luck. But they let us stay. 

I thought to give Fi space for awhile. I doubted she wanted much to do with me now, which was awful, but at least she was safe. That was the important thing, right? That's what I'd done this for. But we ended up together anyway, little by little. Maybe because we were alone in a strange place, among strange people. There was solace in familiarity. I didn't really care about the why. I only cared that I had Fiona with me again.

* * *

 

_**Adam** _

Getting sick sucks in even the best circumstances, but poor Fi had been getting pukey it seemed all week. The place we slept was really a closet--there was room only for a bed, wedged inside so tight that we had to climb in from the foot when we wanted to sleep. Someone had affixed a set of shelves to the wall above the bed for us to keep our stuff. I had dreams sometimes of them coming loose and crushing us. When Carris was in the pool, and Fiona wasn't around, sometimes I'd stand up on the bed and test their sturdiness, just in case.

Today, I was on nurse duty while Carris fed. I'd rooted around in the kitchen upstairs to find something for an upset stomach, but all I'd found was a bottle of club soda. I brought it with, just in case. It was a serious pain that the closest thing we had to a doctor living there full time was Fi, and she was just a second year med student. Whoever was in charge of recruitment needed to start targeting hospitals, clearly.

"Okay," I said, muscling my way into our tiny closet-turned-bedroom. "I don't know if this'll be any good, but this is all I could find." I waved the club soda bottle I'd found along with one of those small, paper cups I'd pilfered from a water cooler. Fiona was sitting on the edge of our bed, arms crossed over her stomach and looking miserable. "Fi?"

Silently, Fiona uncrossed her arms and held out the little white stick that I hadn't noticed her holding. I set the bottle on the floor and took it from her, feeling my stomach drop as I realized what it was. What it meant. "I'll get Carris."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While writing People Like Us, I had a plot bunny that would not go away until I wrote this. So here we are. I'd been edging toward making that story a series anyway, and then this happened.
> 
> We'll return to our regularly scheduled programming (i.e. the rest of People Like Us) now.

**Author's Note:**

> I apparently couldn't continue with People Like Us until I got this out of my system, so here we are. We'll return to our regularly scheduled programming (i.e. Chapter 18 of People Like Us) next.


End file.
